The first, more specific question is this: Why are Kyle Whittingham, Kalani Sitake and Bronco Mendenhall successful college football coaches? Second, what is it about their approaches that make them that? The third, more general question is actually the same as the first two, asked about most successful college football coaches across the country.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve posed the question to many winning coaches over the years, including, at varying times and places, to Whittingham and Sitake and Mendenhall.<\/p>\n
Their answers spanned from attention to detail to insisting on accountability to requiring diligence and discipline from themselves, their assistants, and their players, but at some point they all circled in on one common theme.<\/p>\n
Transaction versus transformation.<\/p>\n
Sitake, Whittingham and Mendenhall didn\u2019t use that exact verbiage, and they most definitely are distinct and different from one another in many ways, but their philosophy at a foundational and fundamental level was and is similar. And that same basic theme was recently preached by a certain coach of whom it could be said that he kind of, sort of knew what he was doing in his role as a football mentor \u2014 Nick Saban.<\/p>\n
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Brigham Young Cougars head coach Kalani Sitake puts his arm around defensive end Ephraim Asiata (44) as a play is reviewed that ultimately led to Asiata’s disqualification during the game against the Portland State Vikings on Aug. 30, 2025.<\/p>\n
Participating in a brief panel discussion among hosts on ESPN\u2019s College Game Day, specifically about what happens and how it happens when a head coach loses a team, the former Alabama coach said the following about creating success:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have a greater chance to lose your team when you\u2019re transactional as a leader, which is the way I was until 1998. In other words, everything was about winning or losing. And when we won, I patted people on the back. But when we didn\u2019t win, I was probably too harsh, didn\u2019t use it as a teaching moment. And negative experiences without teaching kills morale.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saban, in 1998, then the coach of a 4-5 Michigan State team, on the verge of playing No. 1 Ohio State, said he was forced to change. He had a eureka moment, deciding to become \u201ca transformational leader. Somebody that players could emulate, [who] cared about the players for their benefit, not my benefit, [who] had a vision for what we were going to accomplish and how we were gonna do it, and [who] had value-based principles that were gonna help them be successful in life. \u2026 Everything\u2019s about process, nothing\u2019s about outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not only did Saban\u2019s team beat Ohio State that year, his teams\u2019 combined record improved at that juncture from 32-22-1 to 290-49-0.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026 The point I want to make, too, is everything is transactional in college football right now,\u201d Saban continued. \u201cPeople get in the portal. Why do they want to get in the portal? They want more playing time or they want more money. Those things are both transactional. But transformational means you have passion and there\u2019s something you want to accomplish and you want to do, and you\u2019re trying to create value for your future. So, you\u2019re not worried about the immediate self-gratification you\u2019re going to get from those things. So, what is your passion when things don\u2019t go well and the team goes bad? That\u2019s what I think is happening some in college football. Everything is based on transaction, not transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m all for players getting paid, done the right way. But there\u2019s more to it than just running off to the biggest payout. Just like there\u2019s more to good coaching than egotistical maniacs barking orders at everyone around them, screaming at players, requiring and demanding discipline from them, but not from themselves.<\/p>\n
(Eli Lucero | Herald Tribune) Utah State head coach Bronco Mendenhall claps after the Aggies scored a touchdown against Air Force in the second half Saturday Sept. 13, 2025, in Logan.<\/p>\n
The irony to what Saban said, and to what I heard, in so many words, from the three instate head coaches is that the more they and any coach for that matter dial in on results instead of proper processes as a means to an end, the less attainable and sustainable good results are. Which is to say, it backfires.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t want to go all Pollyanna here and turn a blind eye to the realities of modern college football, but quality coaches do care about their players and their development. They do focus on the benefits for the one, even if there are 85 different ones en route to success for the entire group. They do seek to coordinate and grow and teach their players for the right reasons, not just for their own advantage. There might be some coaches who get by for a time with centering everything and everyone around themselves, but those guys don\u2019t usually last.<\/p>\n
In a rather moving moment, Sitake once got emotional when telling me how much he cares about his players. Sure, deep down, he might have increased affection for and attachment to players who have the talent to win games for him, but he cares about the third-string dude who busts his butt in practices, too. He\u2019s likely to throw in a little religion, as well.<\/p>\n
Mendenhall, with a bit less emotion, talked about a thousand different \u201cteaching moments,\u201d moments that he intended to have help young people learn and live to be better players, better people. <\/p>\n
Whittingham might snarl now and again \u2014 the man hates mistakes \u2014 but he also emphasizes the significance of educating players, transforming them piece by piece as opposed to simply and solely praising them for what they bring to him as a part of the deal.<\/p>\n
Nobody\u2019s naive here. Coaches are paid a lot of money if they win. These days, players also get their take, and if enough money is there, enough players will be, too.<\/p>\n
And while \u201cbelieving and trusting in the process\u201d might now be one of the college game\u2019s most oft-heard cliches, there is truth in it, both individually and collectively.<\/p>\n
If a coach wants to win and keep winning, he\u2019d best lead out and be organized and stay on top of his program in many ways, he\u2019d better be able to draw in capable players via resources and his own reputation, be able to help the best of them get to the NFL, but, like Saban said, he also has to be a leader players can emulate, wherever their future might lie, a leader who cares as much about them as he does that number in the win column.<\/p>\n
A quote worth remembering: \u201cNegative experiences without teaching kills morale.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first, more specific question is this: Why are Kyle Whittingham, Kalani Sitake and Bronco Mendenhall successful college…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99,22887,22888],"class_list":["post-194671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports","tag-university-of-utah","tag-utes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}